Bottled threat of disaster

By T.J. McNAMARA

Is Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven read these days? Once it was the reciter's treasure. Its image of a bird as metaphor for a state of mind applies to a group of paintings this week. "Take thy beak from out my heart," the plea to the raven, might well be a motto for them.

At the Ivan Anthony Gallery until July 13, Richard Killeen is showing original and complex images.

Many of the works are shaped like a jar. Jar of Clone has a series of symmetrical images in it.

At the bottom of the painting is a mirror image of two men. Each has a large bird with a sharp beak on the top of his head. There is two of everything in this work, each an exact copy of the other but reversed like left-handed and right-handed twins which result from splitting of the embryo stem cells.

All these jars are equipped with a screw lid and all enclose tight but inventive and varied compositions.

Jar of Traffic is an intensely crowded traffic jam almost beyond imagining. A few birds hover over the intricate crush of vehicles and a little animal, a rat perhaps, has escaped from the throng. Jar of Car has one green car and a lot of shiny blackbirds. Jar of Industrial Complex is full of sinister clouds over acres of factories.

The jars are the staple of the show but there are other equally witty works that have a satirical edge. A piece made up of three war planes shows them decorated with the koru form, seen here as a cliche.

It is applied to almost everything so why not apply it to the wings and fuselages of warplanes? The shapes are three zeroes and the title Koru, Koru, Koru.

A similar point is made by the outline of a tank, which builds up like a ziggurat and is decorated with the buildings of an industrial complex.

You have to keep your wits and eyes about you in a Killeen exhibition. Some works, like the springy Animal Book, are made up of small shapes which are pinned above the doors of the gallery. Animal House Attachment is near the ceiling, Book of Leaf runs along the skirting.

All these paintings are on thin aluminium, as usual with Killeen. This makes them independent art objects as well as images. The process of their making involves a special technique of stencilling on a black body colour.

The black is very intense and gives sharp edges to shapes that allow some freedom of handling within them.

There are times when the shapes are so plain and dry as to be just dull, as in Punctuation Match, and the whole exhibition lacks the grandeur of some of Killeen's early work, but makes up for it with invention and wit.

Black and white also fills the stylish exhibition by Clive Humphreys which is at the Lane Gallery until July 6.

A group of impressive big paintings is done in white on black, with the white paint dragged over texture so it looks almost like chalk and gives a sense of spontaneity.

The actors in these works are birds and horses dressed as humans. Humans are confined to nude paintings within the paintings for the delectation of these beings.

The birds are all equipped with long, sharp beaks and the brightness and intelligence of their eyes are emphasised by the white around them.

The black and white gives striking effects of light, notably in the vivid This Arrangement of Flowers, where birds with long beaks preside at a pedestal table which supports an arrangement of flowers.

The composition of this work is symmetrical and is in some ways similar to the work of Killeen, although the most obvious ancestor is the 1930s surrealist collages of Max Ernst, which used bird heads on humans to screeching effect.

The similarity in mood to the Killeen works is also apparent in a series of smaller works that have two panels like the pages of a book. The series is called Illustrated Books and feature mirror images and repeated patterns, which create an atmosphere.

The black in these works is effective when it describes the silhouettes patterned across the page in The Illustrated Book of Punctuation but is less effective when it is the background for images in white because it lacks the necessary density.

Humphreys' decisive, distinctive style gives his work considerable authority.

The work of Grant Whibley at the Judith Anderson Gallery until July 12 is rather more tentative. Once again birds, and particularly their heads, eyes and beaks, are the special materials of the exhibition.

The birds are metaphors for personalities. The show is called Poseur. An aggressive bird with a big yellow beak and what amounts to wide shoulders is The Green Beret and there is a lovely resting bird called Safe. This painting is unusual in that it shows only the head. The rest of the works include a big body shape which sometimes has some delicate painting but often loses meaning toward the bottom of the work.

The basic idea of these works is an excellent one and has great potential for development, though some works give only a hint of this. Yet those beaks linger in the mind and the memory, if not the heart.